


Out Of Bounds Exception

by fangnominous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Engineering School, Background Established Destiel, Lucifer is an Eccentric CS Student, M/M, Medium-Length Burn, Ramsey is a Therapy Dog, Sam is an Anxious Mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 09:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangnominous/pseuds/fangnominous
Summary: One evening, when Nick goes looking for his logic analyzer to finish a last-minute project, he instead finds a tall, anxious computer science student named Sam hiding in his equipment cabinet.





	

      Sam was endeavoring to remain perfectly still, his knees bunched up somewhere around his chin in a way that probably would have looked comical if he weren't sitting in complete pitch darkness.

      He had no idea how long he had been hiding in the closet. Literally.

      He resisted the urge to check his phone again, worried that the pin-drop sound of his finger depressing the button would somehow alert Becky to his whereabouts. He sometimes wondered if she had evolved superhuman senses for the sole purpose of stalking him. The last time Sam had checked the time it was about 15 minutes until 9:00, which is when Becky usually gave up searching the building for him and went home.

      It felt like it had been about fifteen minutes. It was hard to say, though. Time tended to pass strangely while hiding in closets. It was a sad state of affairs that it was a frequent enough occurrence that he had developed an accurate sense of closet-time, Sam noted. He squirmed minutely, shifting more weight onto the one asscheek that wasn't jammed against something hard and pointy in the cramped space. That was going to leave a bruise. This wasn't one of the most organized hiding nooks he'd taken refuge in.

      When he noticed no sound from the outside world in response to his wriggling, he released a relieved, shaky breath. She'd probably gone home by now. But a few more minutes couldn't hurt. Just to be sure.

      It was only from the months of practice that Sam had cultivated taking refuge in too-small hiding spaces that kept him from jerking violently when the door to the room was wrenched open.

      Sam held his breath.

      The heavy footfalls didn't sound like Becky. Neither did the accompanying, arhythmic tickling of nails on the tile floor. Sam furrowed his brow in the darkness. Were people allowed to bring animals into the Beowulf cluster lab?

      Sam started to wonder if he would run out of oxygen before the stranger left, but he dared not breathe again. The heavy footfalls were coming closer. Then, a heavy, exasperated sigh.

      “Stupid shit heads always leaving the lights on…,” a deep masculine voice groaned quietly. “You’d think they have stock in the electric company.”

      Oh, fuck. He should have turned the lights off. Shit. Well, at least it wasn't Becky, that much he knew for certain.

      The stranger's dog whined as if in response. It sounded like a large dog. Very, very large. The man continued, “If it's those damn freshmen breaking in here to mine for Bitcoins and shit again, I'm going to peel their skin off before I let you eat them.” The stranger’s voice lilted up at the end, and the dog thundered a deep “boof” in response.

      Oh, shit. Not Becky, but a violent sysadmin with a giant, man-eating dog.

      Just as Sam was debating whether or not his life would be spared if he burst out of his hiding place begging not to be eaten, the door of the storage cabinet was wrenched open, the bright overhead lights momentarily stinging his eyes.

      A scruffy, sturdy-looking blonde dressed in a leather jacket peered down at him with a quizzical expression through smudged, black spectacles. His hair looked like it had been styled in a wind tunnel, and the dark, pronounced bags under his sharp blue eyes gave him the appearance of someone who was at once constantly exhausted and alarmingly alert. The big, black dog was wearing a service vest, and tilted its head in a perfect mirror of its owner’s puzzled expression, which probably would have made Sam laugh if he weren't scared shitless.

      After a moment, the man nodded slowly, said, “…Okay,” and shut the door.

      Sam sat very, very still for what felt like a very, very long time.

      Slowly, the storage cabinet door creaked open again, only about a foot, but enough to reveal a set of icy blue eyes that seemed to quickly vacillate between confusion and irritation. Sam thought that this is probably how the raccoons living in his dumpster felt when Dean spooked them taking out the garbage.

      “So,” the man said casually, “either I had _way_ less coffee than I think I did today, or there would appear to be an Abercrombie model hiding in my equipment cupboard.”

      “I…I’m not a—“ Sam huffed and ran a hand over his face. “I’m just hiding in here, okay? I swear, I didn't touch anything, and I'm not a freshman, and, just...could you _please_ close the door again? I'll be out of here as soon as the coast is clear.”

      “Huh. Okay,” the man said, as if finding a large adult crammed into your storage closet was an ordinary if unexpected event. “Ex-girlfriend, or campus security? Don’t have to go into details. I just want to know in case I get summoned to testify.”

      “No...no! Neither. I didn’t do anything wrong, I swear. Can you please just close the door again?”

      The blonde shrugged and bobbed his head back and forth in a way that reminded Sam disturbingly of a King Cobra. “Mmm…,” the man shook his head. “No. See, for one, it's after ten. The building is closed. Everyone without a key is long gone by now.”

      Shit, Sam had been in here much longer than he had thought. So much for his accurate perception of closet-time.

      “Two,” the man continued, “your fine ass is parked on top of my logic analyzer, and I need it.”

      Sam shimmied in place. So that's what’d been poking him in the ass for the past two hours. He wiggled a bit more, trying to free his shoulders from the vice grip of the storage cabinet. It was largely unsuccessful. The stranger raised his eyebrows pointedly.

      “I think I'm stuck,” Sam admitted dejectedly. “Could you maybe give me a hand here?”

      “Well, aren't you lucky I came along then?” A sardonic smirk curved one side of the stranger's scruffy face. One leather clad arm reached into the cabinet, his hand unfurling towards Sam. Gripping the offered hand tightly for leverage, Sam squirmed as the man tugged, and Sam popped out of the cramped space like a stubborn cork out of a wine bottle.

      He faltered for a moment before gaining his footing again, and he tried to shake off the momentary dizzy spell as all of the blood went rushing back to his feet. He shook out his sore joints and rolled his shoulders. “Sorry about your storage closet. I’ll, uh, find somewhere else to hide out next time.”

      “Jesus,” the stranger hissed, and Sam's head snapped up, finally getting a good look at his liberator at eye level. Well, almost. The stranger came about up to Sam’s chin, which was admittedly impressive; most people had to crane their necks to look up at Sam, and Dean’s best friend Charlie barely cleared his armpit.

      “I didn't know they made 'em that tall,” the stranger teased. “So…you a basketball player?”

      Sam resisted the urge to hunch over at the quip about his height. “Why does everyone always ask that?”

      “Probably because you look like the Jolly Green Giant. Christ, what are you, like, seven feet tall?”

      “No,” Sam bit back. “I’m six-foot-six. What are you, like, twelve years old?”

      “No, I'm thirty-two. And, might I remind you, I'm also the one who just saved you from asphyxiating slowly in a storage cupboard. You're welcome, by the way.”

      The large dog heaved a whine, tugging lightly against the lead held tightly in the snarky man's hand, her tail thrashing violently back and forth. The stranger let out a high-pitched whistle, and the dog's behind instantly hit the ground.

      “Sorry, Ramsey's kind of new at this,” the stranger explained, scratching behind the enormous dog’s pointy ears. “She won't eat you unless I tell her to, though.”

      Sam couldn't be be completely sure if the man was kidding or not. This guy was weird. Weird-weird. Different from the garden variety introverted-engineering-student weird. No, Sam had seen that kind of weird; like his brother's boyfriend Castiel's brand of weird, which could be dorky and endearing once you got to know him well enough. This guy seemed almost...unpredictable in his eccentricity, in a way that was at once discordant and jarring to Sam.

      The black leather jacket he wore looked expensive, and clashed horribly with the threadbare gray cargo pants and scuffed work boots he wore. His glasses were name brand but horribly dirty, like the man didn't own a cleaning cloth, and he didn't seem to notice or care. The straps of some kind of harness were visible across his chest beneath his jacket, and Sam wasn't sure whether to hope it was a gun holster or some kind of BDSM fetish gear.

      This, Sam thought, was exactly the kind of guy Dean had warned him to avoid when he transferred to Kansas State University from Lawrence.

      “Oh, shit,” Sam yelped with sudden horror, fumbling at his shirt pocket for his phone. “It's after ten! My brother's going to kill me.”

      “What, you have a curfew or something?” The stranger relaxed, flopping himself onto a work table casually, Ramsey slumping gracelessly at his feet in a heap of black fur and muscle.

      “No,” Sam said, “but he knows Becky always stalks me after classes, so he waits to pick me up out front until I can throw her off my trail. He's probably left by now to assemble a search party.”

      When Sam finally got his phone unlocked, he noted nine missed calls, three voicemails, and over twenty unanswered text messages, mostly from Dean.

      “That’s some protective brother you have. Older brother, I’m guessing?”

      Sam didn’t respond to his question, instead beginning to thumb a response to Dean. He didn’t want this guy to have any more information about him than absolutely necessary. “Yeah, he uh…is pretty protective of me, I guess.” Yeah, right. Dean was looking at “protective” in the rearview mirror.

      “So…,” the stranger continued with an obnoxious casualness while Sam fired off a text message to Dean that no, he wasn't dead, and no, he didn't need to call the police, “Becky, huh? I thought you said you weren't hiding from an ex-girlfriend.”

      “She's not my ex,” Sam said as he responded to Dean's capslocked frenzy that no, he wasn't being held hostage, either. At least, not by Becky.

      “Then why were you hiding from her?” The stranger pressed.

      By the time Sam gave up placating a panicking Dean and put his phone away, the blonde stranger had fished a whole apple out of one of his baggy cargo pockets and was shining it with the material of his gray t-shirt.

      Christ, Sam really didn't want to be having this conversation right now. But what was he going to do? Tell the weird guy with the giant dog who may or may not be wearing a gun holster that it wasn't any of his business?

      “She's not my girlfriend. She's my stalker,” Sam admitted glumly.

      The stranger let out a low whistle. Ramsey's ears twitched and her amber eyes shifted towards her owner, but she didn't move. Good. Not a “kill” signal, then.

      “Must be some stalker to have a guy like you hiding out in cabinets,” he commented, sloppily crunching into the apple and then continuing to talk with his mouth, a lack of manners that would have made Dean grin with pride. “So what'd she do to you that's got you runnin' scared?”

      Sam bit back a groan. He so, _so_ did not want to be having this conversation. “You really, truly don't want to know. Trust me.”

      The stranger's blue eyes sparked mischievously behind his dirty glasses, and Sam was sure he was about to say something like, “Oh, but I really do,” when the smirk slowly slid off of his face to be replaced with an expression of dumbfounded shock.

      “Wait a second,” he choked, audibly swallowing chunks of unchewed apple and wiping the dribbled juice from his stubbly chin, “I know you!”

      Sam stared back, horrorstruck. “No, I don't think you do.” At least, Sam hoped not.

      “Oh, yes I do!” The stranger shook his half-eaten apple at Sam in admonition. “Your name's Sam, isn't it?”

      “I…what? How do you know know my name?”

      “I hate to break it to you, but everyone in my department knows your name, Sam.”

      “How?” Sam demanded.

      The stranger bobbed his head in that same serpentine fashion, a self-satisfied smirk plastered on his face. “The campus Slack channel, of course. You're kind of famous.”

      “I’ve never even met you before, and I barely talk to anyone, period, on campus or online,” Sam huffed.

      The stranger raised his eyebrows mockingly. “Well, maybe you should. One user Beckstar94 has been especially prolific lately.”

      “I don't know what the hell you're talking about! Who the fuck is Beckstar94?”

      The stranger blinked slowly, leaning back and exhaling dramatically. “Oh, wow. Oh, you poor thing. You really...really don't know, do you?”

      “No, I don't, so maybe you should just tell me, since you obviously know so much!”

      “Oh, man…,” he grimaced, setting his apple down and reaching into his jacket with his other hand. As the fabric moved aside, Sam finally saw what was attached to the holster: a wide leather clip from which the stranger withdrew...a tablet.

      It was a chest holster for an iPad. Jesus H. Christ.

      “I’m really, truly sorry that no one's shown this to you before now," the stranger said with mock gentleness, “but it’s such a privilege to be the first one to enlighten you.”

      He flipped the cover of the tablet open one-handed with practiced ease and tapped at the screen, lazily scrolled through a few pages with one finger, and then flipped the tablet around and offered it to Sam.

      Sam's large hands gripped the edges of the tablet like a vice, his eyes scanning furiously.

      It was, indeed, the department Slack. Sam had never taken enough of an interest in socializing with his classmates to bother signing up or even installing the client, which was a mistake, he realized with dawning horror, as he scrolled, dead-eyed and aghast, through the #random channel.

      “She's very...descriptive, isn’t she?”

      “Oh, my God,” Sam's hands were almost shaking with embarrassment by the time he realized what he was reading. Beckstar94’s true identity was glaringly obvious even without the smiling portrait in her user icon, but the visual reminder made it that much worse.

      He could feel the deep red blush creep up his neck all the way to the tips of his ears. There were poems. So many poems. Sonnets, even. But also short stories, most of which were, in fact, quite descriptive in a decidedly X-rated fashion.

      And everyone in his department had read them, except for Sam. Who was the subject of every last one.

      “I haven't seen writing that dirty since we read Catullus in my ancient lit class during my first year. I gather from your reaction that you weren't aware you were someone's Muse?”

      “Oh, my God,” Sam said again, shoving the tablet back at the stranger and collapsing onto the table, burying his burning face in his hands. The blush burning across his skin was a physical thing, his rapidly pounding heartbeat echoing so loudly in his head that he could hardly hear himself speak. Sam wanted to throw up, and then crawl under a rock and die of embarrassment. And oh God, he was really freaking out, wasn’t he? The absolute last place he wanted to be having an anxious meltdown was in front of some stranger who had found him hiding in a supply cupboard. He’d never live this down, and now Becky and the entirety of the student body would _know_.

      After a moment of silence punctuated only by the rushing sound of blood inside Sam’s head, a warm, heavy weight settled on his back.

      “Hey,” the stranger said quietly, all traces of the teasing lilt gone from his voice. “You okay there, tough guy?”

      “I’m fine,” Sam lied into his hands. He was not fine. “I’m just...give me a minute, okay?”

      The warm presence withdrew from his back, and the stranger made a few short clicks with his tongue. Then, a large, wet muzzle was pressed into Sam's lap beneath his shaking hands. When Sam peeled his face away, Ramsey whined, her huge black tail slapping the floor rhythmically. Sam exhaled steadily, wrapping his hand around the back of her huge head to rub at her fuzzy ears.

      “Sorry if I freaked you out with the…,” the stranger gestured vaguely in the direction of the discarded tablet, “you know. I tend to forget that most people have a lower threshold for fucked up shit than I do. I really didn’t mean to embarrass you…I kind of assumed you already knew and were just pulling my leg.”

      “Yeah, no,” Sam shook his head, digging his hands more deeply into Ramsey's soft fur and willing himself to relax. “I knew she was pretty bad, but not…” Sam exhaled sharply.

      “Not 'write hundreds of smut-filled poems and post them to the department Slack channel' bad?”

      “Yeah, that's uh...honestly, a whole new level of fucked up, even for Becky.” Sam tried to laugh, but it came out shallow.

      The stranger sucked his teeth awkwardly. “There was some talk about banning her when it started, but honestly? We weren't even sure she was writing about a real person. Either that, or we assumed 'Sam' was a cover name she was using for writing erotic love poems to some foxy professor. There's actually a betting pool in ECE to figure out who 'Sam' really is.”

      Sam groaned and buried his face in the soft fur of Ramsey's scruff. She sniffled at his neck and licked his ear.

      “All in all, I can't really blame you for hiding out in here. If it were me, I'd be cramming myself into a cupboard to get away from her, too.”

      “So what, you're not going to narc on me?”

      “Knowing who you are now? No. That would be an asshole move, even for me. Consider your secret protected, Sam. And I won’t tell anyone who you are, cross my heart.” The stranger made an exaggerated crossing motion on his chest, but his tone was sincere. “In fact, from now on, feel free to hide in my equipment cupboard any time you feel the need. I think you’ve earned it.”

      “Gee, thanks,” Sam mumbled dejectedly, with much more sincerity than he wanted to admit to himself. “So, now that you have enough dirt on me to bury me forever, do I get to know what your name is, too?”

      The stranger bobbed his head and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Why, so you can write poetry in ode to my glorious visage for all the department to see?”

      “Obviously. I already have one in mind, actually. I’m going to call it ‘Ode to the Weird Guy With an iPad Holster Who Found Me Hiding in A Supply Cabinet One Midsummer’s Eve’. Does that work for you?”

      The stranger not only had the gall to look highly amused at Sam’s jibe, but he laughed, a rough deep-bellied laugh that shocked Sam with its genuineness. Sharp blue eyes gleamed behind dirty spectacles as he extended one hand to Sam.

      “How about just ‘Ode to Nick’?”

      Sam fought a grin as he shook Nick’s hand. His grip was strong and warm and the opposite of everything that Sam had grown used to during his last two years in the department. “I don’t think it has the same creative flair, but if my only competition for quality is Becky, I could probably make ‘Ode to Nick’ work.”

      “I have infinite faith in your abilities, Sam. In fact, I could even leave you a pad of paper and a pen in the supply cabinet, if it would help your process.”

      “While we’re at it, what would it take to get you to leave a snack in there? Y’know, just in case.”

      “Hmm…well, you could always do a bit of tidying up while you’re in there.”

      “Yeah, I’ve seen the inside of that thing. Don’t push it.”

      “Hey, you’re the one who decided to hide in there, Sam. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

      Sam’s phone buzzed with incoming text messages eight times in the next hour. He didn’t notice any of them, and Dean was apoplectic with worry when Sam finally stumbled in the door well after midnight.

      Nick forgot his logic analyzer in the supply cupboard.

**Author's Note:**

> I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with this story. I just know that there's probably going to be more of it. I apologize in advance. 
> 
> I really want to give Becky a redemption arc eventually, but she has a bit of growing to do first. She's not going to be a main antagonist in this story, though. 
> 
> Nick's tablet shoulder holster is a real thing that actually exists, which I know because I own one. Also, cargo pants are awesome if you already own a tablet shoulder holster and just want to fully commit to never having to carry a bag anywhere ever again.
> 
> If you want to come yell at me to write faster, I'm fangnominous on tumblr.


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